be his special envoy and the united states spent two years and the obama administration, some political capital, trying to broker a negotiation between mahmoud abbas and prime minister netanyahu and ultimately was not successful. i do agree over the past couple of years, there's been a pause in the peace process, you know, to try to see if conditions, you know, could be created to bring us back to a negotiating table. but i would also say that, you know, it's -- the environment today is much different than it was even four years ago. you have had the arab spring and everyone that's involved in this is doing careful recalculations of their strategic interests and that's even going on i think in the heart of the negotiations that are ongoing for a cease-fire. >> just to follow up, are you implying too many visits just means it's a bad situation there? >> well, you'll recall, the environment between 2003 and 2008, you know, the united states was involved in an act of war in the middle east. so again, the agenda to some extent drives, you know, where a secretary of state spends the bulk of